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I remember around 2000 I read about how Ted Turner started his empire: he bought podunk local TV stations that had loose contracts with media owners that allowe
by lubujackson 6mo ago
I remember around 2000 I read about how Ted Turner started his empire: he bought podunk local TV stations that had loose contracts with media owners that allowed them to broadcast shows as often as they wanted, with no restrictions. In the those days, local TV stations were broadcast just like radio and so the assumption was the contract only concerned the audience the TV station's antenna could reach. But the contract didn't specify this. Recognizing the loophole, he bought multiple stations and combined that content into its own cable channel(s) that played old movies and TV shows: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Turner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Turner This was the basis that allowed him to branch into CNN and more.
When I learned about this, the story was very applicable to me at the time, as my startup had acquired licenses for content that was historically sold directly to libraries by a salesman who would negotiate with each library individually. He used a standard contract. When we contacted the company to license content for display on the internet, they gave us a ridiculous contract with a small one time fee and access to display the content forever. Only after reasoning through their business model and history did we understand how this occurred, which was exactly the same type of gap that Ted Turner had exploited.
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- superfrank 6mo agoWow. It wasn't until I read your comment that it clicked that the Turner in Turner Classic Movies is Ted Turner.
- mc32 6mo agoThere was a bit of a furore when he tried colorizing old B&W movies… imagine if he’d had AI to do colorization, upscaling and sharpening back then! Guess we’ll still have Ted’s Montana Grills for a while…
- Forgeties79 6mo agoRightfully so if you ask me. Out the gate think about the implications of determining, say, skin color. I’m not saying “under no circumstances should it be done” but I also think people don’t appreciate the importance of the decisions made and the politics/implicit biases under the hood. I’m not even getting in to artistic intent and impact on lighting here either. Colorizing b&w images is still debated to this day.
- mc32 6mo agoEh regarding skin color people don’t care about realism these days. You have historical remakes with totally anachronistic ethnicities in them and “no one” cares. I mean sure, some people do, the same as some people used to complain about overrepresentation of caucasians in some old movies set in what was then called “the orient”. I think the only ones who put up a fight are the Japanese who don’t like their productions ethnically misrepresented as much. B&W highlights the stories better. With color you get more ambient context and sometimes that’s interesting.
- Forgeties79 6mo ago> Eh regarding skin color people don’t care about realism these days. You have historical remakes with totally anachronistic ethnicities in them and “no one” cares. This isn't exactly the same thing. Colorizing historical footage decides what the color is. A remake is an interpretation with nowhere near the same claim of accuracy and the audience 100% knows this. The social politics of this are incredibly important.
- philipallstar 6mo ago> The social politics of this are incredibly important. Or they are incredibly transient, fashion-led and led either by the least intelligent people available, or those who stand to gain from them.
- Forgeties79 6mo agoyou’re welcome to your opinion as well
- asciimov 6mo agoThose colorized movies were awful, AI would have just made them awful in their own way. Outside of film restoration, old movies should be enjoyed the way they were made.
- jacksontheel 6mo agoI would say film restoration is what allows old movies to be enjoyed the way they were made.
- esafak 6mo agoColorization does not count as restoration. That's enhancement, at best.
- isomorphic 6mo agoAll restoration choices are at least a little bit subjective. That said, I agree with you!
- echelon 6mo agoJust wait until we simulate old films and media and turn them into living, breathing VR games. We'll eventually do that for all of history. At least the history we have samples of or can plausibly recreate. I'd imagine playing one of those might be like living your life right now. Punctuated by lots of mundane, lifelike moments. Like reading an "internet forum" full of other period appropriate "humans".
- mc32 5mo agoSounds a bit dystopian where people are living in what amount to a synthetic reality. At that point reality’s importance decreases and at some point the virtual reality becomes the more normal existence and people eschew actual reality. And at some point you think why not virtualize all experience and then life itself…
- doodlebugging 6mo ago
- dylan604 6mo agoI was wondering if they are going to put Ted's crayons in the box with him. At the time of this first being done it was so comically bad, and the jokes were ruthless. As much as I'm not a fan, the modern AI stuff is so much better without saying it's good. That's just how bad Turner's colorization was. The best colorization was Weta's footage from WWI where they used the actual uniforms in the images as reference rather than just someone adding color based on the feels.
- m463 6mo agoI kind of wonder if there were color photos of the actors and scenes from the time of some of the black-and-white movies. You could use them as conversion-training-data with AI to auto-colorize the movies. (maybe they do that now?)
- Bratmon 6mo agoThis is like being surprised that the Obama the Obama Presidential Library is about is Barack Obama.
- asveikau 6mo agoI had a chuckle at your comment and felt it was true. But wonder if the commenter is younger. Ted Turner was much more of a household name and public figure in the 20th century. He became less involved in the cable empire by the mid 90s. Younger millennials and onwards probably heard people talk about him a lot less. Ps. Another memorable media portrayal of Turner, he was clearly the basis for the boss character in the 1994 cartoon The Critic.
- Melatonic 6mo agoObama is also a lot more recently known and a more unique sounding name
- singleshot_ 6mo agoWon’t you be surprised to finally learn about the precursor band to Canadian legends The Guess Who: Barackman Turner Overdrive
- mattmaroon 6mo agoOh! I thought it was Jim Obama, the owner of Obama Chevrolet of Sheboygan!
- sophacles 6mo agoI don't think anyone else with the name Obama has been president of anything that confers a library (let alone a presidential library), your answer seems a bit needlessly derisive. I suspect you're just insecure about your personal level of useful knowledge and are trying to lord over someone with your trivia fact.
- SoftTalker 6mo agoAlso the "T" in TBS, originally WTCG in Atlanta that became "superstation" WTBS (later dropping the leading W). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_TBS_(American_TV_channel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_TBS_(American_TV_ch...
- sanj 6mo agoAnd WTBS the radio station was also purchased by Ted Turner! It was originally "Tech Broadcasting Service" and run by an MIT student group. For the $50k purchase, the newly-named WMBR purchased a new transmitter. https://wmbr.org/www/history https://wmbr.org/www/history
- tapoxi 6mo agoI never knew this. Also if you're in the Boston/Cambridge area, WMBR is a fun and weird listen and clearly sounds like college radio when compared to something like WERS.
- acomjean 6mo agoWmbr is great. I always assumed it was “Walker Memorial Building Radio” based on the building it transmits from.
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